Life After Larry

Summers' replacement may be a woman and/or a former CEO, Politico reports. All of Obama's top economic advisers at this point are men with limited experience in the private sector.

A "leading candidate" is Ann Mulcahy, former CEO of Xerox. Several other reports also mention Mulcahy, according to the WSJ and others. Laura Tyson, a Berkeley economist who worked in the Clinton administration, also gets several mentions.

Tim Geithner is sticking around, the NYT reports. With Summers, Orszag and Romer all gone, he'll be the last one standing among Obama's core economic team.

How did Summers influence policy? This question gets little attention in the morning news, but the New Republic sheds a bit of light. An unnamed administration source tells TNR:

For at least the last year, and probably more, Larry has been among the economic advisers most concerned about the state of the economy and the state of the recovery — and the most consistently loud voices for not letting up on fiscal expansionary policies from the federal government.

"Fiscal expansionary policies" is a fancy way of saying stimulus spending, by the way.

Imagine you could call up a friend and say, "Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy." Now imagine that's actually a fun evening. That's what we're going for at Planet Money. Want to know more? Check out our "about" page. Want to connect with the Planet Money team? Send us an email.